To expect my dh to eat what I've cooked?

There is jacket potatoes, chicken, rice, cauliflower cheese, salmon,stew & left over chinese. My dh has decided he doesn't want any of that & has made himself fish & chips which hes burnt anyway.I'm pissed off. We have a budget for food & left overs keep piling up. I make food mostly in advance as we have 5 ds' including a baby weaning & it's not always easy to cook when I need to. The boys will have rice tonight & we'll have the rest tmw but I don't see why my dh should eat what he feels like when the rest of us have planned meals!!rant sorry

It does feel like a restaurant sometimes but you can't always get portions big enough to feed all of us especially with 5ds. Boys just seem to shovel it in. Anyway he thinks I am being very unreasonable & can't see my point. I tried to explain that as he ate 2 bits of fish & finished the chips there's only 2 bits left for another meal for 4ds so the cycle continues. Luckily ds' aren't as awkward as him & hopefully won't pick up his habits.

It seems a slightly inefficient way of feeding the family to a budget to have a pick and mix selection of offerings for re-heating.

I'd just make one big thing that was available for each meal (e.g. A shepherd's pie or a lasagne) and let everyone help themselves to their own portion if the logistics of eating together didn't work.

so that everyone gets a choice (and so I don't have to lose the will to live at thinking up yet another meal plan), I'd make meal planning collaborative. Everyone gets to add a dish to the meal plan, so everyone gets to eat what they want at some point. I make a meal plan but it's generally flexible about what meals will get eaten on which days, depending on how I feel (as I have to cook and no one else seems to express an opinion).

Tbh he's fed up with budgeting as am I but we have good meals, home cooked & he still makes a fuss. He'd be happier just eating Iceland food but I've worked hard to make sure ds have a healthy variety. He doesn't see my meals as meals. Eg. Jacket potatoes with salad, ham. Homemade burgers & not chips with everything! His mum just used to leave them to it so he's used to frozen food done in the fryer. But he's older & wiser know but still doesn't appreciate the effort cooking for so many takes. My boys on the other hand are lovely & always tell me how much they love their dinners

Fair enough Ali I suppose I am judging it from the POV of would I like to eat that selection. I guess if there had been no mention of left over chinese and stew my answer would have been different. If it had been jacket potatoes, cauliflower cheese, salmon and some vegetables, it would just seem altogether more appetising.

I would have added the stew and the chinese to a new stew and a new chinese just so that the meal seemed complete IYSWIM

They don't have buffets of leftovers every day. I try & make something fresh & the leftovers go in the freezer. When I don't have a chance to cook they come out. Works for me with the ds' just dh that makes a fuss. He mostly eats out for lunch anyway as he gets luncheon vouchers from work which is nice for him!

Thanks funnys. I take on board what you & others have said. Thinking about it the salmon was leftover from dh's dinner on Wednesday & the chicken was from his dinner last night. I would probably save money if I didn't cook for him at all & he just sorted his own dinners out.

Sometimes it does make sense to have a 'buffet of leftovers' if you genuinely have a lot of bits and pieces left and don't want to cook a whole new meal; today I had salmon pate for lunch (using up a tiny bit of left over salmon), DH had last night's left over fish pie and DS had yesterday's left over sausages - so I didn't cook anything 'new' but saved money by eeking out what we had left. Our evening meal (which was a snack as we are all out tonight) was equally varied.

Rather like the expression 'buffet of leftovers' - think I will use it myself in the future .

We had finish up Friday today. All the finish ups were very nice, so no-one was being deprived. There was chilli, bolognese or shepherds pie, and they were all finished so that was very satisfactory. We do a weekly meal plan and there is no alternative choice offered generally, so it's a bit of a change.

We call it "Catch as catch can", and its a great way to use up left overs. I think a lot of people honestly don't realize how much food is wasted.It had to be grown and shipped, packaged and sold, all that time and money and efforts and natural resources wasted, because we open the fridge, see the left overs and go "Naaahhhh".It drives me bonkers!